okay uh so hello and welcome to everyone uh before we get started i just wanted
to um provide you with a few housekeeping notes we will be recording this webinar
today and it will be posted onto our website afterwards there will also be a q a session after
the presentation so please feel free to type in your questions in the q and a function at any time and we we will read
those out during that session so to start off most of you know uh who i am by now
and if not i welcome the opportunity to get acquainted i’m marie mold and i’m the manager of
stakeholder engagement here at electricity human resources canada thank you for joining our webinar today
on designing culture for 2021 with our very special guest today jennifer collins
in our most recent report um that we just launched yesterday actually powering through
together over 95 percent of the respondents surveyed felt that their pandemic adaptations
have strengthened their company culture building a strong team overall i think
that’s really great news for for our industry the question is how do you maintain that culture
you have built moving forward so the report is available and it is on electricity hr.ca if you
want to have a look at it i’m very delighted now to introduce our presenter jennifer collins
jennifer is the ceo of hazel and colin associates a leading boutique management
consultancy delivering transformative leadership culture programs
jennifer is recognized as an innovator in the evolution of leadership and culture working with executives
teams and organizations to accelerate strategic imperatives while optimizing people and process
performance a strategist at heart jennifer understands how to assess the landscape
of an organization to design a plan that aligns people around a shared vision
as an icf certified executive coach jennifer’s passion is inspiring leaders to inspire others
she is skilled at developing high performance cultures that build leadership bench strength and deliver meaningful
business results welcome jennifer we’re thrilled to have you here today and now i’m going to switch this over to
you fantastic thank you so much marie it is such a pleasure to be here who
wouldn’t love i mean big passion of mine culture people leadership so to get to talk to
about it for an hour is a gift um and i’m sorry i can’t see
everybody but i’m glad to see you’re here i can see participants rolling in um
as we go i’m just going to start sharing my screen and if you could bear with me i’ll get
that up and going right now
and here we go
okay so welcome to the conversation um and what we’re talking a bit about
today is how do we design workplace culture for 2021. um and marie i think
it’s fascinating the outcomes of the report being that the organizations
that participated feel that their adaptability and agility over the past year has actually fostered
more high performance in culture moving into 2021 and actually the research is telling us that that is
true so that feeling that gut i’m sure some of some of you have done assessment and survey
it’s very true we actually made some really great gains over the past year if if something good
did come of it we did see some improvements in our organizational culture and now
the opportunity is to really understand what were those improvements and how did
we make them which of those improvements are actually sustainable
into 2021 and how do we lead that culture moving forward so this
morning i’m going to talk a little bit about um i’m going to talk a little bit about
culture from a reflective point of view let’s reflect back on what’s happened
this past year as a means of forecasting what will be needed and necessary
in terms of our leadership and our organizational cultures moving forward and i love even though we’re doing
webinars i love there to be some interactivity so i’m using a tool this morning called
poll everywhere and i’m going to invite you right now to either pick up your phone
or open a separate web browser and on your web browser you go to pollev.com
and you enter hca and you’ll see some live questions coming up we have a couple
near the front end of this presentation alternatively you can go to your cell
phone and open up your messenger messaging app and
go to 37607 so in the telephone number just type 37607
and you’ll be able to put in a code to respond to us via text
and that code is actually hca so you’re texting hca to 37607
okay we’ll have another chance to look at those instructions in a second
um so marie thank you very much for the introduction um i won’t spend too much time here i’m
jennifer collins um i’m the ceo of hazel and collins associates and as marie said
our focus as an organization is on culture strategy and leadership strategy
so how do we design cultures in our organization that enable us to achieve our business
imperatives and that’s an important note there culture is not
fluffy stuff culture is not a feeling alone it’s not a checkbox that hr takes care
of culture really is as important if not more important than having a clear strategic direction and
clear business imperatives for an organization so how do we create a culture that enables our businesses to thrive
and then how do we support our leadership in adopting the mindsets the behaviors
and the leadership competencies to lead that desired culture that’s where we focus
and a lot of the research and insights that we’ve garnered over this last year from our clients is
what i’m going to share with you this morning we have about half an hour of me being a
bit of a talking head and then we’re going to have time for q a so please use the chat
in fact why don’t you say hello to each other in the chat now let us know where you’re calling in from
or attending from and marie is going to track what’s happening in the chat so that we can
answer some of your questions in the last half of this hour
hi charlene nice to see you how deep is the snow in alberta but it’s deeper than the few centimeters
we got here hello narav nice to see your name fantastic
only a little deeper okay welcome to the conversation guys great to have you here
um i’m going to show you this slide for two reasons so for those of you who are saying who’s
this woman what experience does she have here’s the experience that we’re bringing to the call
we’ve worked with organizations across industry for many many years for those of you who
aren’t as interested in who we’ve worked with i share this slide to say this
every organization no matter the size whether it’s a seven person charity or
a startup or a six 000 person fintech or a 60 000 person manufacturing
org whether you’re not-for-profit private sector public sector
leadership and culture impacts your business’s ability to deliver so no matter our size this is an
imperative for all of us here and here we go we’re talking about
culture today and i can see some of you are already answering the question in our poll everywhere poll
how do you define culture so if we’re going to keep using that word i want to understand how you defined it
and please feel free to submit so it’s the experiences norms and way of life for employees
absolutely it’s the attitude and atmosphere that’s present yes it’s
living breathing palpable environment in a workplace it’s mindsets it’s shared
beliefs and values it’s goal focused we’re describing it someone here has
said i describe i’m assuming your organizational culture is open agile and collaborative
yes those are all behavioral aspects of some cultures and organizations
all of these definitions are true culture is the dna of our organization
it’s what differentiates us from other organizations and our competitors it’s how we go about meeting our goals and
missions it’s how we interact with each other it’s how we interact with system structure and process
in our organization and for today i really want to capture it in just a
few succinct words so here’s the definition that we use in the work that we do
and i’m going to leave the slide up for a second because it’s quite complicated and here it here it is
it’s the way things are done around here so obviously i’m joking not complicated
quite succinct it’s the way things are done around here and this is a definition that comes out of harvard
iliad and barrett value center it is the way that we get work done it’s the values
symbols behaviors and assumptions that we bring to work every day culture is the key factor that
differentiates one group from another and if culture is all that
what is leaders role in culture everyone on this call is a leader
whether you’re in an executive position or not if you make a decision that impacts other people or if you’ve been
empowered to make decisions in your organization you are a leader so what’s a leader’s
influence culture is a direct reflection of
our leadership our personal beliefs values and behaviors culture
is a reflection of our executive teams leadership style their beliefs their
experiences their successes and their failures it’s a reflection of the people that
come to work every day and what they believe about how we need to interact in order to get work done
so it’s so important that when we look at culture we don’t just assign it to a particular
function in an organization like hr but we look at it as something that we
are responsible for especially at the senior and executive level as we make those strategic big decisions
about business imperatives and that culture is something that we impact
so as we talk about designing for 2021 think about this as our work or your
work and not the work of others in the org
okay so here’s another thing i’m going to ask you to do today as we walk through designing for 2021.
i’m going to ask you to really hold what i call a dual perspective
so you know many events in 2020 offered us a moment of truth
covid 19 the black lives matter movement social justice in general health mental
health awareness leaders are rightly asking themselves are our choices and actions right now
reflecting our culture and the purpose and values that are going to sustain us and define us today
and tomorrow so today i’m going to ask you to hold these two perspectives
to create insight and value for the short term and the long term by both reflecting
and forecasting at the same time guys we need to get out of the weeds and
that’s the invitation today is let’s get out of the weeds get up on the balcony and take a really big
picture view of what has happened this past year and how that is going to help us design
moving forward how did the choices we made over the
course of 2020 impact people culture and community
are our choices right now supporting us as we move forward
will the culture that we’ve created in the past what eight twelve months will it be
sustainable will we be able to maintain that level of adaptability the level of communication as we move
into 2021 and beyond and how do we need to adapt our own leadership style and approach in this
more virtual world to lead moving forward
back to the polls again and someone’s already participating so you tell me when it comes to 2021
which strategic driver do you believe is a critical bet for your organization
and in this particular pool you can just type a b c d e f g h i and i think it will let you
just pick one and we understand that there are more than one feel free to put comments in the chat as
we go along but again we’re asking which strategic driver do you believe is a critical bet
okay so diversity equity inclusion absolutely um so to be
frank as these come in i’ll share with you um we were did a different um a conversation around
this with a different group of executives about a month ago and asked the same question
and yes diversity equity and inclusion was absolutely the number one critical bet
going into 2021. employee engagement a little focus on talent management and
retention purpose values and behavior work digital acceleration performance management
customer experience okay here’s what’s
really interesting about culture is when aligned with strategy
no matter what your critical bet is for 2021 culture is the driver
of those critical bets and a strong culture is going to drive positive organizational outcomes across
all of these different imperatives whether it’s engagement digital acceleration performance
resilience innovation even understanding whether or not we have a culture that is
enabling diversity equity inclusion equality belonging all of this is
is born out of our culture a thriving culture is really no longer
nice to have it really is an essential investment that you can make in your organization
impacting internally employee engagement digital acceleration externally
it impacts customer satisfaction talent attraction and fiscally your profitability your
shareholder value and here’s the my favorite little slide
to sort of wrap this up in a bit of a bow when the winds of an organization
when your strategy your missions your vision your plans your goal
are at odds with the feelings in the organization what people think they want what they’re
looking for the direction that they’re headed performance suffers the degree of
transformation we saw in the first six weeks of this pandemic was equated to five years of
of change at our pre-pandemic pace so let me say that again the degree and the amount of
transformation that we saw in the first six weeks of the pandemic starting in mid-march
was equated to five years of change at our previous pace which was already
record high for us to be able to keep our people aligned to that pace and to
direction we have to be paying attention to their feels feelings beliefs values and
behaviors last slide why culture why now we’re
busy we’re tired we have so much on the go 2021 is coming we’re all looking forward
to coming back in with new revived energy and we have so much work on our plates
so why delve into culture well if we’ve ever needed an engaged talented purposeful people in
our workforce ever tell me when we’ve needed it more than now convince me
because i think it is now with all these positive correlations culture is ultimately the thing that’s
going to streamline and enable you through this next year to keep up with
the amount of change and transformation that will be needed and to keep up in a way that satisfies
the new employee experience that was created this past year by the decisions you made in how you
would lead through this unprecedented period of time
i’m going to share with you some results that will allow us to reflect and
forecast and this is a global perspective
and we’re now again doing that essential reflection i’m sharing results from a global
culture survey conducted by barrick barrett values center this year we engage with
organizations in diagnosing culture understanding measuring and we utilize barrett’s culture
assessment to really obtain an accurate um i’m going to call it mri of the organization
barrett has over 21 years of experience they’ve worked in organizations they’ve even assessed
the cultures of countries with four million assessments complete i
trust their insights and i hope you do too so as we look at these aggregate results
imagine how valuable it can be to do culture survey in your own
organization so here we go let’s reflect
personal values so personal values are these are the values that people
bring to work every day they’re who we are they’re the values that we hold
they’re in who we hire and who arrives at our door and we invite our employees to work for
us and they bring some of those personal values to work and sometimes they’re asked to leave some values at the door
because they’re not practiced in the organization personal values are fairly consistent
over time but when life conditions change it can cause people to shift their values
and re-evaluate priorities and as a society we have absolutely seen a shift
in people’s priorities how could we not every aspect of our life
was impacted our our elderly parents were impacted our own health and well-being our finances were impacted
um society was impacted our social circles were impacted um your people who you hired
pre-pandemic have shifted their priorities they’re coming to work and they’re different than they were
when we compare our personal values today with our values pre-covered we’ve seen
four new priorities peak people are priority prioritizing making
a difference so really wanting to be part of making a difference in this world their community
and their organization they’re prioritizing adaptability they’re also prioritizing well-being and
caring continuous learning and family were always present
pre-covered however they’ve increased in priority well-being in fact has shifted
from being number 26 on our priority list of personal values to number five
so take that in for a second and now focus forward what are you doing in 2021
as an organization to engage with people along those values in order to foster
connection with your people what system structure process in place what
initiatives do you have in place to really enable adaptability well-being caring
to continue in the year to come here’s another reflection here we see a
shift in key business focus areas so we see here that the traditional
process focus of finance and effectiveness especially true in utilities as well
has actually shifted or to a focus on agility and innovation so our traditional focus has changed
we’ve also increased our focus on employee well-being over this past year and we’ve increased
focus on direction and communication there’s been so much accessibility
between our executive and senior leadership and all people right down to the front line
that employees now expect it moving forward in fact during coved results orientation
in organizational behavior shifted from number two to number 25 in priority achievement
focus shifted from number six to number 50 there’s been a massive shift in where
we’re focusing on these key business areas and again from effectiveness and finance
to people innovation engagement so those positive culture enhancing
shifts are creating a new employee experience so here’s our reflection again the
pandemic and social justice movement have caused organizations to really put focus on people’s needs
and you know through the summer months for example organizational cultures reflected the importance of employee
health work life balance the pandemic also disrupted business operations we
saw organizational cultures respond with unprecedented levels of adaptability and
agility which you you yourself found in your orgs covid19 cleared away rigid structures
to embrace change and to ramp up innovation we couldn’t function in that week when we were told
to go home with the hierarchy and the bureaucracy and the rigid system structure and
process that were in place we were having to find new ways of doing things
so now focus forward the employee experience used to be performance now it’s people focus
it used to be about control now adaptability used to be hierarchy now it’s about
working together so what is your current employee
experience what expectations did you create that you will be asked to meet in 2021
and will that experience that’s expected is it the actual experience that will enable you to
continue to achieve your business imperatives and to stay competitive in the face of global
digital transformation increased innovation and agile industry competitors
are the expectations sustainable we worked with one organization the level of communication that was
expected was not sustainable they could not maintain that
so had to create a new employee experience in the past few months to sustain the organization moving
forward when we asked people to describe the
behaviors and priorities that would help us recover so your people when we’re
asking them what will help us recover um we’re seeing that there’s a strong
alignment between what people experience this past year and what they want moving forward
people are not asking to really go back to the way things were in fact i don’t think we can ever go
back we are changed in fact when we analyze how confident
employees are that the shift in focus that was made this past year is what’s needed
confidence has actually tripled since the pandemic this means that the cultural shift
brought about by our response to covet to the black lives matter movement into
the other major life-changing events of this year now more than ever are what people want
moving forward so here’s the forecasting again
do you have an organization who is emphasizing employees desire
for engagement innovation continuous learning open communication
teamwork digital connectivity these are all going to be drivers of those business imperatives that you
have on your plate moving forward i thought it would be helpful instead of
talking about research to give you a couple real examples so these are a couple of clients we’re calling them company a and
company b for today who have done an evaluation a culture diagnostic
to understand what has changed in their organization and i just thought it was really compelling to share some real
information and to just show you how drastic the new expectation can be so in this
particular case collaboration innovation and teamwork
was part of the organization’s dna already this was how we would describe their
culture and we want even more focus on it but employees identified
new focus areas so where before they weren’t prioritizing now this
organization’s employee is prioritizing accountability agility information sharing employee
engagement transparency professional growth continuous improvement they have a real expectation for culture
evolution another organization similar type of
results so in this particular case company b
charlene i know i want to work for company a totally get it it’s great organization
too i’ll let them know you said that um so company b we have an accountability
culture we have a continuous improvement culture we have a teamwork culture and you may get the feel here that
there’s a bit more of a manufacturing component in this organization very very uh target
related numbers related accountability continuous improvement but new focus here we want to see
employee engagement recognition open communication as our priorities heading into the next
year and again when i say new focus these are focuses that they’re not seeing today
but feel are necessary moving forward so just to wrap this it’s to say
we have to understand the employee experience and how we change that experience and then ask
ourselves can we create it moving forward to design that culture for 2021
and here’s my favorite quote and this is now back to us as leaders
95 of our assets drove out of the gate and it’s our job to ensure that we
maintain a working environment and a culture that brings them back every morning and jim made this quote well beyond well
before this 2020 crazy year well guess what in march
95 of our assets drove out and didn’t come back and now we’re trying to create a place
where people are willing to come back to a screen every morning to stay focused when their
kids are in the background when they’re distracted by the laundry that’s in the corner of their home
office in some cases or in situations where we have frontline workers who are
working in you know scary conditions where we’re worried about covet where
there’s more system structure and process to keep us healthy and safe
we have to figure out how we as leaders take on the mantle of culture
and really drive what’s desired and learn to lead in a different way in
order to do that so a couple of tips a couple of ideas
how can you design your workplace culture well the decisions you make affecting your
business model strategy and the well-being of your employees is directly tied to culture understanding the shifts
is what’s being called for and it offers you a huge advantage so consider engaging your organization
in the important work of defining their desired culture
and you know i had someone refer to this as uh crowdsourcing and it sounds silly but in a way it is
we want every person in the organization to tell us what they’re experiencing
what they’re expecting and then to be able to help us connect the dots so we can design for
action if you have any aspirational goal or
vision in 2021 that you know is going to require a mindset and behavior shift in your
employees a new way of acting leading or behaving could be new strategy direction
think back to all those you know require big bets that we had
all of our strategic business imperatives if any of these require people mindset shift we know we have to
address culture in order to make it happen consider culture versus employee
engagement alone and employee engagement is very valuable it really does have its space in place
but now is the time to go a bit deeper it’s a simple formula as your culture
improves so does your employee engagement it makes your team more productive
etc engagement is about showing up at work every day
and how you feel about it so are you showing up and do you feel good about the work you’re doing culture is deeper and more
telling right now it’s about are we doing the right work in the right way and feeling good about
it culture really gives us a bit more of a holistic approach to workplace strategy
than engagement alone
also number two be prepared to meet your people where they’re at
so frankly they outnumber you if you’re a leader our people our
frontline people are the people and it’s our job as leaders to create followership and to inspire
action historically when we’ve considered factors that impact workplace culture
executives have ranked tangible items so they’ve ranked
financial performance and competitive compensation amongst the highest measures of workplace culture however in
contrast employees rank intangible elements they talk about culture in terms of
candid communication employee engagement and recognition access to management and leadership
looking ahead leaders and staff appear to still have differing
priorities in terms of what is important about making this organization thrive
so leaders are desiring a greater focus
on um on agility and innovation and a greater focus on
society and sustainability so executives and leaders who are making the decisions about strategy and
business imperatives are more focused on agility innovation
society and sustainability which is quite outward focused staff on the other hand have a very
clear desire for greater direction and communication internal focus
and they want a continued focus on working together by building oops sorry there by building
trust and engagement so here’s the forecast forward again
as we lead our organizations how do our desires between executive
and leaders differ and how can we as leaders understand that
difference and understand that different perspective in order to meet our people
where they’re at and bring them with us into that agile
innovative future focused culture in a way that creates alignment versus
disconnect you know if we’re not careful as senior leaders and executives we’ll move
forward and not meet the needs of our people they won’t come with us which will create a lot of
we’ll lose a lot of that positive cultural impact that we had
in order to do that tip number three we really need to focus on having
balanced leadership in our approach and our style and this is essential in 2021 and beyond balanced leadership
has always been important but now more than ever as leaders and as we build leaders
there needs to be a balance on both relationship leadership and task leadership so
we get back to that dual focus again are we building leaders who have a high degree
of empathy compassion and emotional intelligence are they good strong communicators
are they able to connect with people virtually through email through video
are they able to inspire and empower and at the same time have that people
focus but also remain very clear and purposeful in their direction prioritization
execution and in change management and often leaders are stronger in one
than the other our absolute imperative is to build this balanced leadership and enable people to embrace
both coming to the end here and then we can
open for q a i can see some coming in but please feel free to put your questions in here
and daryl i can see your question yes we’ll be able to share the deck in fact this session’s being recorded so
you’ll have the recording i believe marie can talk to that a bit more um but here’s sort of a last tip and
it’s do not rely on new strategy and structure alone so this model is called the influence
model and it actually comes out of mckinsey and essentially their work determined
that about three quarters of change and transformation initiatives failed because leaders don’t pay
attention to the mindsets and behaviors of the organization we put our emphasis on well let’s write
a new strategy that will enable us to you know achieve new business imperatives in 2021 and beyond or
let’s restructure or reorganize in order to achieve that but we have to look at all four levers
equally is the strategy and vision that we have for 2021
actually compelling to our people does it meet their expectations does it meet their new
priorities um are do they know what’s expected of them and is it meaningful
yes reinforcing mechanisms system structure process do we have and have we adopted our
adapted excuse me our systems and structures to enable us moving forward
role modeling are the leaders in this organization ready to lead in a different way
honestly what got us here as leaders will not get us there we have to evolve and adapt
and are we role modeling that communication style the direction the balance
leadership approach that will take us there and then finally do we have the skill and capability in our businesses to
thrive do we have digitally fluent employees do we have employees with balanced
leadership do we have individual contributors who are willing to take on the mantle of leadership and innovate every
day last but not least i’ll just share with
you this quick snapshot from utilities specifically and really what we’re seeing here within
this industry is what we see globally we see that pre-covet there was a really
strong emphasis in our culture on performance and connections being maintained through
community involvement a lot of our frontline employees our engineers our field techs our
technicians are in the field are in their communities during coved
we saw some scary things and some good things we saw stress actually reduced by 12 in utilities we
saw long hours down by 26 less emphasis on cost reduction
support for stay at home for people who needed to and we saw an increase in information
sharing what’s desired in utility specific very similar to the global
picture working across groups has become key so enabling digitally and
in other ways cross-group collaboration breaking down silos that existed before
there’s a clear call again for ongoing direction and communication how do we maintain that as an executive
and senior leader with everybody up down and across the organization
people want innovation new approaches new ways of doing things the breaking down and the continued
lessening of bureaucracy and hierarchy and there is still and remains a desire for
a more supportive workplace a workplace that’s focused on people and employee well-being
so the question i leave here is and this i think is the question we need to ask all of our people when we’re designing
for 2021 how can our industry learn from this current situation
to create a more cohesive approach to our culture in the year to come
and with that i opened to questions and maria i went a little bit long um oh
that’s fine but happen to hear from you or from people
please sure um i’m just gonna start off i saw something in the chat here um and it was a question um
this the question is is this also related to generation gaps in the workplace which i think is a great
question new cultures versus legacy thinking
so could you repeat that last half just very quickly uh new cultures versus legacy thinking
yeah so um so we did do a when we took a look at
this we did do a generational um cut so we did look at how the past year is impacted
across different generations and what i would ask there is if you’d like to email
me directly or marie directly whoever asked that question i can share that information there is a bit of a
difference in generational experience but the number one thing that is the
same across every generation is the the need and the focus on adaptability
and with adaptability we have to lessen hierarchy bureaucracy control
we have to look at system structure and process that is actually flexible and that
enables people at all levels to make decisions and to be engaged in those decisions
when we talk about legacy culture so culture is often
driven by legacy beliefs behaviors values system structure and
process it’s the way things are done around here and it’s the way things were done and we
haven’t questioned it ever new generations coming in they don’t necessarily know what those
legacy issues are but it’s very contagious um
i you know i hate to do this i’m going to tell a very quick story is that okay marie yes please
it’s a an experiment that was done and my colleagues listening here she’s probably rolling her eyes that i’m
telling this there is an experiment done in which they took
three monkeys i don’t mean to compare people to monkeys but monkeys are very intelligent
animals bring them into a room and they give them a bunch of blocks and
they hang a bunch of bananas at the top of the room and the monkeys look around at each
other they see the blocks they’re very industrious they build the blocks up this actually happens in the experiment
they build the blocks up in order to be able to reach the bananas but when they do reach for the bananas
they’re actually blasted by some cold air or some people say it was cold water
from a pipe that they didn’t notice so there’s a there’s a hand slap essentially and the
monkeys go down the blocks and they think oh gosh and they try again they go for the bananas but every time they reach for it
they get blasted by the cold cold air well the scientists they take out one of
the monkeys and they put in a brand new monkey so these are your new employees coming into the organization
and that monkey looks around and says hey guys why aren’t you going for the bananas like seriously does no one see
this and he builds up the blocks and what do you think the two existing monkeys do they stop him
they hold him back they basically tell him not to go for the bananas and that monkey listens eventually the
scientists switch out everybody at all three monkeys and now there’s three new
monkeys in the room who have never experienced the blast of cold water but they still don’t go for the bananas
and that is legacy culture i hope that was a fun story i can see other questions
coming in yeah i’ll start off with the the first question that we have in our q a uh what do you think would be the impact
of increasing deplayment of automation and ai in work process
in sorry in work processes on corporate culture corporate culture impacted negatively or
positively um corporate culture impacted positively if we take the time
to engage our people in the decision making around it the mindset shift that it’s going to
require and really communicate and understand from from them what it means so i do
think that that that is a major shift that’s happening in industry
and there’s many people who are on board but it is going to change our experience in the workplace why
people come to work and if we just go do it you’re going to
have you know a lot of dish disengaged people who see this as again going back to some system
structure process that isn’t necessarily enabling connectivity social community etc but if we can
understand where our culture is at we can understand the levers required to bring them along
so i strongly believe that any real business transformation if it
is you know a smart business transformation that will that will support an
organization’s success anything that will support organizational success
can improve culture if we pay attention to the mindsets fears beliefs and behaviors of the
people and potentially make some real decisions about who in the organization can
embrace that culture because they have the leadership capability skills etc
and who may not wish to embrace that culture and and frankly should leave
to work in a culture where they do feel engaged
okay thank you thanks jennifer that was a good response um i have another one we have a couple
more i know we’re gone over a little bit but if you’re okay i’ll just do a few more absolutely okay um the next question is
should there be more emphasis on task leadership more than the relationship leadership
um i don’t believe so i don’t believe so
so well what we’re seeing is as organizations start to say we have
to get back to work as usual we’re entering the new norm um most organizations put a major in major
focus on people and well-being through the last year and now we’re seeing a shift where we
are more focused on tasks we’re coming to this end of this year i could see someone in the chat say i’m
more stressed hot increased workload people are starting to feel
tired to be quite frank and if we do focus on tasks in order to
deliver on these major workload issues but we forget about the people focus
this is like a sudden shift for our employees they have come to trust the promises
we’ve made around employee well-being engagement caring connection
and so i do think we need leaders who are really able to maintain that
as a way to enable the task so being able to connect with
people practice emotional intelligence empower and engage
foster teamwork coach and mentor in a in order to achieve those strategic
imperatives manage workload and allow for the courageous difficult conversations we’re going to
be having as we innovate and change in the year to come task is important i think a balance is
essential okay well maybe we’ll do one more
question there is still more but we will try and get those uh those responses back to those people
how does ethics play sorry how does ethics play in creating culture should ethics be documented and
formulated like policy in creating a people focus
oh interesting conversation ethics and this very much connects i
think to diversity equity and inclusion i do think i do think
culture or what we’re desiring to foster in our culture and how we behave and treat people
does need to be documented in the same way that process needs to be documented
but i also believe that you know we we can’t it’s funny it’s the pendulum
swinging from um being too process oriented
and using those processes as rules that restrict our ability to be innovative adaptive and flexible and
yes we want to create process i know lots of organizations are now creating okrs expectations performance management
expectations around culture impact but again we still want those to be
flexible adaptable and innovative or can be innovated upon and we want
them to enable diversity equity and inclusion and organization so people can be authentic to how they
impact culture i hope that’s helpful
you know i i just want to read one more question here because i think this is a really good question i mean
they’re all great questions actually there’s quite a few and i’m really pleased about that um i
think part of empowering employees is to also allow them to show their vulnerability
areas they need support training in especially true for digital competencies can this
vulnerability factor be included in setting objectives what is your vulnerability what key area
do you need support and guidance with as an example yes yay vulnerability
so it’s so funny i feel like it used to be a bad word and then we it was sneaking into leadership
and it’s here so um i believe vulnerability in some ways can be
measured there’s new research coming out that measures vulnerability and there’s also great
research that correlates vulnerability to a culture of trust
which by the way trust in management and leadership is two-thirds
of the questionnaire around being one of the best places to work so vulnerability positively correlates
to leaders who are able to create and foster trust connection and collaboration
and vulnerability also correlates to resilience and i’m not talking just about
resilience in terms of our spirituality and balance of mind i’m talking
occupational resilience so vulnerability correlates positively to organizations
who are resilient in time sorry in times of change and vulnerability fosters resilience in
teams as well as individuals at an occupational level
i do think vulnerability is something we can measure and should measure and will foster
cultures moving forward and i don’t just think that it’s coming out in the research too does
that help would that answer the question do you think marie i do um and again like i said there’s just we
could be talking about this for the next hour because there’s some great questions and some chat happening
but with that in mind i will respect everybody’s time um so first of all i want to thank you
so much jennifer today and all of the participants it was a really great webinar
you can stay informed about some of our future webinars and resources by signing up to our newsletter
on electricityhr.ca i want to wish everybody the best and to get some rest
and relaxation for this upcoming holiday season and we look forward to hearing from
everybody in 2021 i want to say take care to everybody thank you so much and hopefully we’ll
see you soon bye for now take care everyone be well please and feel free to send
questions we’ll respond afterwards thank you so much thank you
uh [Music]